Muons created by cosmic-rays in the atmosphere and the subsequent muon-induced events are one of the main concerns regarding background in neutrino experiments, as well as in other Rare Event searches. The cases where the experimental set-up is placed on surface or at shallow depth, with the muon flux remaining high, are even more critical, and a precise knowledge about the flux, energy and angular distribution of muons reaching the detector is mandatory for an effective data analysis.
As an example of this, inside the Double Chooz collaboration, a full study on atmospheric muons for the two identical detectors has been performed combining data analysis and the corresponding simulations. Besides the full characterization of the muons reaching the detectors, including their track reconstruction, this study allowed, for one of the first times at shallow depth, to observe the annual modulation of the atmospheric muons flux and its correlation with the atmospheric effective temperature, being in agreement with the expectations based on theoretical models.
Moreover, muons can represent a valuable tool for other applications, as for the so-called muon tomography technique for structures scanning. In the second part of the seminar, it will be shown how the muon simulation framework performed for Double Chooz has been adequate to study the potential of muon tomography as scanning method, as well as to try to improve the capabilities of this technique during the data analysis.
